Down and Dirty

The team woke early to a grey sky for our first adventure in the rainforest. We ate the breakfast that Edson and Ellen set out for us, showered and prepared our lunch before being greeted by Robson (the principal investigator or lead scientist) and Julio (assistant investigator).

We donned on our rubber boots and grabbed our bags and headed off to the field plots. Today we split into two groups - Brazilians to the undisturbed site and non-Brazilians to the mature, disturbed site.

We hit the road, with the clouds threatening to rain, heading towards the park entrance where the park rangers were waiting. Passing through the gates, it became very clear why we wore the rubber boots: Sections of the trail saw us ankle deep in sloppy mud!

 
After about an hour of slowly wandering through the forest, checking out all the new plants and animals, we made it to our plot. Once again we split into two groups - Lu and Tommy were assigned to tree measuring with Robson and while Alba and I were assigned to empty the leaf litter collector and weigh the beehives with Barbara and Tony.

  
We finished around 1pm and ate our lunch in the forest, making sure we avoided the hungry ticks and mosquitoes.

Once we got back to our “palace” we had some free time to relax until our 5pm learning session. During tonight's session we all gave 5-minute presentations on Alcoa and its sustainability programs.

For dinner we had spaghetti and sat around the fire eating S’mores and telling popular stories and legends from each of our countries.

                                                             Blogger: Todd Bell